Horror Movie Month: Sinister

The Stars: Ethan Hawke, James Ransone

The Plot: A true crime writer moves into a house where a family was brutally murdered in order to write a new novel about it. In the attic, he finds a creepy box of super 8 home movies which depict multiple seemingly connected crimes spreading across countries and decades. Creepy things ensue and also, the family apparently don't have electricity.

The Scares: The movie is not scary at all. In fact, it's sort of stupid. I had read a few reviews of the movie and all of them said it was genuinely scary. That's false. The plot is stupid and the more supernatural it gets, the dumber the movie becomes. Everything Ethan Hawke's Ellison does is a bad decision. The movie is basically a mash up for every classic horror movie that has come before it, but not nearly as good as any of the predecessors. The footage from the super 8 videos is genuinely creepy and that alone deserves a much better movie. Plus, I genuinely liked the ending although I think it took a big stretch to get to that point. The writer took a big leap of faith with the ending, hoping the audience would believe all of these far fetched things in order for it to work. I, for one, didn't believe much of it so it didn't completely work for me, although I did like the idea of the ending. Overall, Sinister is pretty lame. Even my love for James Ransone and the creepy super 8 footage couldn't save it. Also, moral of the story? Don't have kids... right???

The Body Count: 3 in real time. If you include the super 8 footage, then I think it's 21 or something like that.

The Grade: D-